


Dancing Face to Face

by newyorktopaloalto



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Glam Rock, Glitter, Homophobic Language, London, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newyorktopaloalto/pseuds/newyorktopaloalto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 1976 and Glitter is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Face to Face

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following: Velvet Goldmine, Glam/Glitter rock, and the new David Bowie album. Mentions fictional characters as real people and real people as fictional characters. 
> 
> I really have no excuse for this.

Glitter was dead. Glitter was dead and glam was dead and six-inch, knee-high boots in bright purple with matching eyeliner was dead. Patterned shirts made of silk and unbuttoned down your chest and browsing through record stores, whispers of ‘fairy’ and ‘queer,’ being thrown around, all the while you being proud, because you understood something they didn’t was dead. You took the train to London for the death of glam, and you subsided on the remnants, along with all the other wretched vampires that soaked up Bowie and Mercury and Slade as though if they didn’t listen to them, life would be meaningless. And maybe life would, indeed, be meaningless without them— without the idols that birthed you from their music and nourished you through their pretty, glamorous lives. 

You took the train to London from Dublin and never looked back, smoking fags on street corners and sneering at the mods who lived in the flats next to yours— your best friend giggling her high-pitched giggle as she took another pink tablet that made you see the stars in the refraction of glass. You took the train to London and took a day job as a receptionist, wearing suits and ties and redefining gender norms by being the best damn secretary the small company ever had. You left Dublin and tried to leave your accent, but sometimes it came back and your friend who wasn’t really your friend, who yelled a lot but paid his rent on time, sneered and jeered at you on the arm of his newest girlfriend. You left Dublin and saw your cousin one day, in some up and coming of the new genre in the post glitter world, playing guitar for a band called Van Halen. They were nothing compared to Wilde and Fairy and platform shoes and lamé and reflections so bright they almost burned. 

Glitter was dead, but you were not, and as you smoked your menthol-laced cigarettes on the street corner, a mod came up to you, blue eye grinning and brown eye sneering, and you went to the flat you made fun of because looking at him reminded you of Bowie. His flatmate was a girl who looked and dressed from the 1950s of America, and she waved as she poured through a history book, and you ignored her to taste his mouth instead— he tasted of shitty music and coffee, but as he laughed at the glitter coming down from your hair, his voice was electrifying. A record was put on as you went into his room and you almost left then, but then he took his shirt off and you suddenly remembered how alive you actually were. 

You lived in London, half in your flat and half in the flat of the boy who you still made fun of on street corners, but now kissed him afterwards, your best friend sighing in mock disgust as she spun around and threw glitter over the two of you. You never went back to Dublin, where your father had called from a million times, asking you to come back and stop being a stubborn child— that he would cut you off. You almost ran out of food that winter, before you learned how to save and invest and how to vie for a better position at the firm you had been reception at. 

Glitter was dead, and you never much had a dream to become part of the movement, but wearing glasses and no makeup was a blow, regardless. Sometimes you trudged back to your flat and felt like an old man, until you saw him trying on your makeup and laughing at himself because he couldn’t much do it correctly. You always showed him how. 

You never expected to need anything more than Bowie and Slade and Mercury, but now that you had heterochromatic eyes and refracted pink in your sights everyday, maybe you only needed Bowie and Slade and the rest for music, not for life. Glitter was dead, and everything that went along with it was also, but finally, achingly, you accepted that. You took a train from Dublin to London, and could never imagine going back.


End file.
